Last chance to honour fallen comrades

100-year-old Canadian vet headed to France

- JORDAN OMSTEAD

Richard Rohmer is not sentimental when he says, matter-of-factly, that this may be his last D-Day anniversary trip to France.

At 100 years old, the Second World War veteran says this 80th anniversary is his last decennial commemoration, and perhaps the last time he makes the trip to France at all.

"This is the last one. This is the 80th anniversary and there won't be any others to follow because we're running out of people," he said of the anniversaries marked every 10 years. "But the opportunity to be there for the 80th is an important one to me because I was there for the beginning." Rohmer is part of a dwindling camp of Canadian veterans who fought in a battle that altered the course of the war, and the course of the 20th century.

On Normandy's shores, the largest-ever land, sea and air invasion took German defences by surprise on June 6, 1944, and marked the beginning of an Il-month liberation campaign that would end with Allied victory and Adolf Hitler's defeat. As a then-20-year-old reconnaissance-fighter pilot, who joined the war effort in 1942, Rohmer surveilled the skies overhead during the battle.

"It's hard for anybody who's alive now to understand how deep that change could have been if we had failed," Rohmer said. "The people who were the enemy were very hard at work and trying to conquer the rest of the world. We made sure they didn't." What's true for Rohmer, about this being his last decennial, is likely true for many veterans who fought and survived the fateful battle. It invariably raises the question of how to ensure their memories and lessons are preserved.